#Texas blizzard

[lezbeach]

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[relaxedstyles]

[thechembow]

First-ever Blizzard Warning issued along Gulf Coast as deadly winter storm slams Texas

Jan. 21, 2025 - Fox Weather

A powerful and deadly winter storm that has been sweeping across the South dumped heavy snow in Houston and other communities in southern Texas on Tuesday, causing significant impacts on travel and even prompting forecasters to issue the first-ever Blizzard Warning for portions of the Gulf Coast...

Snow totals ranged from about 2-4 inches across the greater Houston area. According to the National Weather Service, William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) picked up 3 inches of snow on Tuesday, making it the most snow in one day since Jan. 30, 1949, when 3.1 inches fell.

This is now the third-snowiest day on record at the airport...

I think I know the orgonite gifters responsible!

[mintchocolatechipisthebestflavor]

getting ready for another four years of libs celebrating whenever there's a massive storm in the south. because their favorite nazi didn't win 🙄

[boobachu]

[cartwheelandfaceplant]

Texas February blizzard 2021

[stormcenter2024]

November snowstorm hits Colorado hard, traffic lights down! USA

[althaeaofficinalis]

the same people who say dismissively, "just go vote!" to people in voter suppresion states are the same ones who post, "wish that natural disaster would have killed everyone in texas lmao". that's it, that's the whole post.

[corvid-on-the-rock]

This goes for political deradicalization too. As much as it may suck, you won't make someone Not A Nazi without compassion. the thing that a lot of these kinds of people are truly hinged on is fear, uncertainty, distrust so on and you have to show them how to overcome these things without falling for some bullshit (on all sides! the scientists and political activists who look down on/disdain the people stuck in these ideologies have fallen for some bullshit!) It's the only way forward.

"But they're ignorant, they're like a cult, but I've tried educating them and all they did was argue" yeah that's what happens when you get brainwashed. You have do decondition and deprogram before you educate. You have also been brainwashed to believe you can hate the hate and shame the ignorance out of existence and that divisiveness is what upholds our, notably oppressive, 2 party political system. Fucking wake up.

I really like what this physicist, Lamar Glover, has to say in Behind the Curve. 

+ this part from Spiros Michalakis:

[hawkesoutdoor]

Get your #blizzard box #portable #fridge off all sizes at Hawkes Outdoor...

[beepsnivy]

I happened to be in Michigan from the 7th to yesterday. I’m back in Texas and there’s no snow or blizzarding here, but……..this morning the weather widget on my home screen said “good morning the temperature is currently 14 degrees F”

I can’t escape. Or perhaps I brought a piece of northern weather with me :( sorry Texans

[boobachu]

Also it was the hottest day ever on earth four days in a row last week

Some alarming climate news as of June 2023

Antarctica, which is in the dead of winter, has unexpectedly failed to reform its winter sea ice. This is an exceptional deviation from the norm that has left scientists dumbfounded.

The entire NE Atlantic Ocean is experiencing its most significant marine heatwave ever…by far. That area had never been a full 1°C above the 1951-1980 average. It has suddenly jumped to 1.7°C above that average.

A powerful heatwave has overtaken southern North America for weeks on end, with places like Texas and northern Mexico breaking daily record high temperatures.

In the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, sea surface temperatures are extremely high. Water temperatures are in the *90s* by the Florida coast, Miami keeps breaking daily record heat index values, and a major coral bleaching event will soon be underway.

The Canadian 2023 Wildfire Season will not let up, with nearly all annual records falling before we even reach the midpoint of the season. No Canadian wildfire season had ever produced 12 terawatts (TW) of fire radiative power. 2023 has produced 18TW.

Dramatic flood events have begun striking various countries around the world simultaneously this week.

El Niño has rapidly developed in recent months as sea surface temperatures across the equatorial east Pacific skyrocket. As of yet, El Niño has not impacted global weather conditions. That will change in a few months.

All of these events have culminated in June 2023, easily being the hottest June in Earth’s recorded history. Likely the hottest June in 115k-120k years when Earth was last this hot.

[chronicowboy]

(we tried) we said we'd keep in touch | 6.9k

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the universe gave Evan Buckley twelve gingerbread men, eleven blueberry muffins (dropped one), ten scones, nine fruit pies, eight burns on his hands, seven stitches in the cut above his eyebrow, six oatmeal cookies, five loaf cakes, four nameless hook-ups in seedy bars, three strikes from Bobby, two best friends in Texas and one pregnant sister kidnapped by a maniacal serial killer.

All that to say—Buck isn't much feeling the festive spirit this year.

And everybody must be able to read the bah humbug on his face because Bobby somehow manages to wrangle them a day off on Christmas. Maddie offers to host at her house just so long as Bobby is in charge of the turkey—Chimney keeps talking about a deep fryer. Hen says her and Karen will be in charge of drinks, and even Grinch Buckley salivates at the phantom smell of the Wilsons' mulled wine and spiced cider.

Then, they all turn to him, and Buck is already making a list of the ingredients he'll need for a Yule log and a gingerbread house and those weird spiced German cookies that Buck can't pronounce and Eddie swears he hates but secretly sucks  down like a lab rat with cocaine. But—

Christopher is eight-hundred miles away making a gingerbread house of his own, maybe with Eddie, maybe with his grandparents. And no one will make them a chocolate Yule cake even though it's their absolute favourite, and Buck swears he got drunk off Eddie and Christopher's delighted faces when he'd unveiled his first homemade attempt at the station their second Christmas together. Or someone will make it, but they'll make it wrong. Frosting too sweet, not enough powdered sugar to make it look like a blizzard had passed through. They'll forget to chop the end off at an angle to make a little branch. And they won't make a little marzipan robin that Christopher won't let anyone eat because it's too cute.

Buck shakes his head like an etch-a-sketch. Erases everything but that yawning grief that seems to tear soul open just a little wider every day, so that the loneliness can flood in. He asks how everyone feels about trifle, sugar cookies, tiramisu. And it's fine.

Everything is fine.

(OR: buck is feeling very bah humbug, but he gets his christmas miracle even if it's a day late)

[fatehbaz]

Some updates from the past twelve-ish months:

-- Late 2022: Portland and its mayor (Wheeler) started a major push to ban "street camping". Headlines in major media outlets also described "Portland's first sanctioned mass homeless camp" and how "Portland moves forward with $27 million plan to build mass shelters". In December 2022, Portland-area authorities used the so-called "aggressive landscaping" tactic, installing hundreds of hostile architecture boulders to prevent sitting/sleeping. Also in December, homeless advocates and Disability Rights Washington advocates attempted to halt Spokane's (Washington) clearing of a major camp for hundreds of people, and a federal judge sided with advocates to put a temporary restraining order on the sweep.

-- January 2023: Even in the immediate aftermath of historic cold as far south as Miami and Monterrey, sub-freezing temperatures across the Deep South, and sub-zero-Fahrenheit blizzards sweeping North America for a week or longer around Solstice/Christmas 2022, convenience stores "in Texas, California, New York use classical music to shoo homeless".

-- By March 2023: "Portland Mayor Wheeler unveils first location for city-run homeless camp".

-- April 2023: San Francisco and Mayor Breed announce a major "five-year plan" costing over 600 million dollars "to cut the number of unsheltered homeless in half". (Not a plan to put people in homes or find stable housing, but just to technically put them under the roof of shelter, keeping them out of sight, therefore qualifying them for the strange designation of "the sheltered homeless".) At the same time, San Francisco opened a "long-term homeless shelter on Treasure Island", pushing homeless people onto an isolated island mostly composed of concrete and asphalt.

-- Summer 2023: In May, the city of Phoenix (Arizona) began its project to clear and eliminate its largest homeless camp, known as the Zone, a refuge for hundreds of people. During the record-breaking heat of the summer of 2023, Phoenix cleared the camp systematically, block by block. At the beginning of September 2023, as "Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F [110 degrees Fahrenheit] for the 54th consecutive day", the city cleared the block of the camp where most seniors and the elderly lived.

-- January 2024: About one week ahead of winter holidays (Solstice/Christmas), the City of Edmonton pursued plans to sweep 130 homeless encampments as part of what has been described as a "shocking" eviction plan. In January, the city was clearing camps amidst sustained deadly severe weather, during a polar vortex event with temperatures of negative 50 degrees Fahrenheit and daytime highs of negative 25F. When a court case presented by Coalition for Justice and Human Rights tried to slow the sweeps, a judge sided with them and shut down the evictions.

-- March 2024: Florida's governor signs a new law. NPR describes: "law that seeks to move unhoused people off public property altogether and into government-run encampments".

-- April 2024: The U.S. Supreme Court begins hearing a case from Grants Pass (Oregon) with major implications and potential to incite nationwide "banishment race" and "homelessness crackdown". Lower courts have previously said that city policies (like Grants Pass, Boise, and others) were "cruel and unusual" for fining and/or jailing people for sleeping on public land if no adequate accessible shelter is available. But now?

[certifiedposeidonhater]

PERCY JACKSON HEADCANONS!! (i have a very, very, VERY long series of these on my tiktok so i’ve decided im gonna start posting them here!)

this is gonna be the first part! i’m gonna do like 20-25 each part. (there’s a lot…) just a reminder to pretty please be respectful and kind. i love hearing different opinions and explaining why i think the things that i do or my reasoning behind these, but if you are rude or mean, im just gonna shut you down. if you want to RESPECTFULLY discuss our different opinions, i would LOVE to!! 💙

alrighty, here goes (why am i lowkey nervous?):

1. So, you know how aphrodite children know French bc it’s like the language of love? Percy knows a lot of island/oceanic languages that are native to island cultures (e.g. Māori, Tahitian, Samoan, etc.) because…poseidon.

2. Percy bottles up all of his emotions until he eventually has a mental breakdown where he lays in bed for a few days and completely isolates himself from all his friends and family. He kinda just pops back up when he’s done and acts like nothing happened. None of his friends or family really have the heart to bring it up, and if they do, he’ll just dismiss it and shut down.

3. He physically cannot eat when someone is upset at him or he’s upset at somebody else (he’s usually upset at himself.)

4. Percy and the aphrodite cabin were kinda friends. Especially him and Drew and him and Silena. I don’t know why but it just makes sense. They have weekly gossip sessions. The aphrodite cabin were the only campers (well mostly Silena but still) who didn’t avoid or ignore Percy once he got claimed. Silena and Beckendorf took him in and became almost parental figures.

5. Percy once got in an argument with his dad so he drove himself to a nearby church and got himself baptized at a local church to spite his dad (which i feel like kinda cancels out the whole point of the baptism but whatever.) His mom also got him baptized when he was a baby because she was annoyed at poseidon and also bc she grew up in a kinda religious household. (‘Cause i’m pretty sure that Sally was from Texas and so it fits the region.)

6. He’s not white. He’s actually Hispanic/Portuguese. It fits the majority of the ethnicity census in the area where he grew up so it’s very likely. Plus (other than Walker) i lowkey cannot imagine Percy as white.

7. He has nightmares from seeing himself from another point of view and seeing how scary he is. (He’s scared of himself. (He sees himself as Luke.))

8. Gods and goddesses used to visit Percy as a kid and just kinda chat him up and hang around him a bit. He would literally just randomly be sitting on the subway and suddenly Iris pops up and starts talking to him, and Percy being the 8 yo kid he is, he starts talking back and suddenly it’s a full-blown conversation.

9. He has a special spot that he used to go to with Beckendorf. They found it while they were searching for something for one of Beckendorfs projects. It’s like a little pond somewhere in the forest, super remote. Percy still goes there whenever he’s at camp and it reminds him of Beckendorf.

10. He has the ability to see the past through water. Like how water can collect energy? Like that science thingy where energy can kinda collect in water? Well, Percy can use his powers to kind of bring the past to life based on what has happened near the water. (e.g. he could use the water in the creek to create like a mist version of the things that happened there. Like his claiming. think Frozen II)

11. When he was a kid, g*be used to kick Percy out on the streets. He would be supposed to be taking care of Percy when Sally was at work and he would just make Percy go outside for hours at a time no matter what the weather was. Even if it was a blizzard and Percy didn’t have a jacket, Percy was outside.

12. g*be has broken Percy’s arm (multiple times) and he told everyone it was from falling down the stairs of his apartment complex. It never healed right either so his right arm is a little funky.

13. He’s left handed.

14. Percy has tried to off himself. But that’s also canon so like-

15. Percy dissociates a lot. It happened more when he was a kid but it started up again after the first war. He will dissociate for hours and no one knows how to get him out of it. It stresses Annabeth out SO MUCH.

16. He developed an eating disorder where he hated himself so much that whenever he ate, his mind would hyperfixate and overthink about that hatred and how much of a terrible person he was to the point he would throw up everytime he ate. Restricting what he eats also helps him feel in control of his life, and he gets so little control that the feeling of starving himself became almost euphoric.

17. He HATES pigeons and squirrels (it’s irrational.)

18. He’s fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. and some Italian bc of g*be and bc he grew up around the Italian mafia.

19. He knows A LOT of random facts about random local places without ever being there. It rlly impressed Annabeth when she started talking abt some cool architectural thing and Percy was js like “oh yeah, i know all about that!” he’s never been to half of them, but he knows about it.

20. His New York accent was *super* noticeable when he was a kid and he got bullied for it, so he started hiding it and does it subconsciously even though he knows his friends wouldn’t make fun of him. It still comes out when he’s tired, stressed, or emotional.

21. He code switches.

22. Percy hates Boston and New Jersey

23. He isn’t patriotic at all but the SECOND someone starts talking bad abt nyc he is ON IT. Same with if a European (mainly a British person) says something bad about America, he starts becoming Alexander Hamilton. He suddenly LOVES his country and that country’s culture.

Hope yall enjoy! I’m just posting old ones from tiktok so i have them backed up on somewhere and to get the people on tumblr caught up and there will be more soon ���🤗 If yall have any questions or anything, PLEASE ask me! I love talking to people about this stuff!

[themareverine]

— wild man

Logan Howlett x fem!OC

summary: Blizzards and pane glass windows—typical for a Thursday night at Laughlin City's favorite haunt. Until the Wolverine walks in, and hell hath no fury like a man ravaged by jealousy.

warnings: language, possessive behavior, angst, jealousy, implied sexual content, established relationship from my Mare & the Wolverine series.

a/n: i don't know what this is, really. went to write a different oneshot and it turned into this. guess my brain needed some jealous Logan. reposted from my deactivated account.

MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION

Inky midnights glare through the windows of Laughlin’s oldest haunt as the season’s thick, wet snow falls in an almost sideways blanket. The bar is flatlined, almost asystole. Heavy bass, thanks to Huey Lewis and the News, thunks from the stereo system like a jackhammer against her skull, trying to fill space that bodies aren’t.

Stale cigarettes and fried food in the air mingled with the highschool smell of sweat and testosterone, which may as well have been painted to the walls they were so familiar. Sticky floor, slick bartop, chipped tile in the bathroom—common ghosts for nearly eleven thirty on a Thursday night.

“Really comin’ down, ain’t it?” 

It’s more the sudden spike of cold overflow from the tap that jars Mare McAffery from attempting to glance around her reflection from the pane glass window. Surprised, she startles, slapping at the tap’s toggle before her fingers curl around the chilled glass. Slick with foam as it sloshes over the rim carelessly to the mix of drinks that have already found their fate on the floor at her feet. It isn’t her night. The lack of business has her brain running, her thoughts anywhere but here on a Thursday night among the snow, cigarette smoke, and canisters of beer she needs to change in back. 

She’d rather be home. Bundled in blankets, wool socks. Watching the kick of fireplace flames from the safe brace of Logan—just Logan. All of Logan. His arms, that absolutely breathtaking chest that ripples with life and hard muscle and heat. Feeling the rise and fall of his every breath, how the fresh wash of her hair tangoes with his heady scent of whiskey and cigar, wood and snow.

Feeling the warmth of his feet toying with hers under blankets as they stretch out towards flame, listening to the rich way he chuckles every time his nose brushes against the back of her ear. How his rough fingers pull through her cropped curls, teasingly carding as he dares to whisper about his day against the curve of her ear—-

She jumps when the edge of the bar comes up a little too quickly against her hip. Her heart shellshocks against her ribs like a violent engine. Feeling flushed, she bites the inside of her cheek. Lathes her tongue against the front of her bottom teeth. Praying to God the low light hides the color on her face seems fruitless, but it's there. 

Reaching for a bar napkin, her smile is slow as she slides the beer in front of Laughlin’s foremost gossip, affectionately christened Flappin’ Jim by the town’s population. No less than four decades her senior, stringy silver hair peeks out from beneath a nearly-threadbare Carhartt beanie, stained with what could only be assumed was engine oil. Jim has owned the zip code’s only machine shop longer than she’s been alive. 

She shrugs a shoulder when he mentions the snow a second time. “When isn’t it snowing up here?” The squared-off toe of her western boots scuff the floor cooler behind the bar as she reaches for Jim’s ever-requested cocktail straw, plopping it in the dark amber of his lager before his parted lips could continue, “I’ve seen my fair share of the white stuff—but never like this. You know how they say everything is bigger in Texas?” Jim chuckles, nodding as his tongue seeks out the straw, his gaze never leaving her, “Well, I swear to God, everything is colder and thicker in Laughlin.”

His laugh comes from his chest, phlegm from forty years of smoking Player’s. “Forget it’s your first snow with us, poor thing,” Jim waves a hand between the two of them, brows bobbing suggestively as his grin widens enough to reveal half-rotten mid-to-back teeth, “iffin’ you’re thinkin’ you need a ride home, darlin’, ol’ Jim’s got room for two on the old snowmobile—” 

Her brain nearly melts at the absolute atrocity of a mental picture that statement provides. She could think of not a single thing worse than going to the door with Flappin’ Jim, much less riding an hour west on a snowmobile in little more than jean’s and a leather jacket. Laughlin’s poster child for bad decisions and alcoholism. Perfect. 

Informing him of her lack of proper gear was the kind out. “Thanks for the offer, though, Jim,” her nose scrunches a little as she works at the try-a-hundred-times-a-day-but-still-nothing stain practically etched into the oak grains of the bartop, “Logan’s coming to get me, he knew the snow would be bad. Dropped me off this morning before work.” It’s nonchalant—surely women were dropped off and picked up by their boyfriend’s during bad snow in Laughlin. 

Never mind working a double, Jim’s brows popped tall as if it were an entirely new concept straight out of a Stephen King skincrawler. “Wild Man’s comin’ all the way down the mountain in this shitstorm?”

His thumb goes over his shoulder, despite evidence of his claim hanging in the window to his three o’clock left. He whistles over his shoulder for his buddy, Kenneth, to listen up. 

Kenneth’s head raises with interest, like a meerkat rising from his hole. “Lord’a mighty, Kenny boy—you was right, mus’ be better than’w thought!” 

More vapid laughter has Jim, and now Kenneth, hacking up a lung from their respective seats. 

Whatever population’s in the bar—eight souls —turns to look at her, snickering and the twist of their upturned lips all but nailing her to the back wall. Like looking from the outside in. May as well have all been pointing fingers at her—and, unsure whether her gaze should fall to Jim or past him to Kenneth, her raised brows opted to consider the older man sweeping his hat off his head.

Unwashed hair nearly glistening with what she can only assume is grease and oil, a thought that makes her stomach rise up to kiss the base of her ribs. His laughter turns raucous as his eyes skim over her, hazed. 

Swallowing a splash of stomach acid, her brow furrows hard behind the bridge of her glasses. 

“Pardon?” 

Wringing the bar rag through her hands, Mare ultimately realizes how this makes her look. Tosses it aside. Stands a little taller, wants to look down her nose at Jim, but realizes she’s shorter than he is, perched on a stool. More wind howls, biting at the bricks, flecks of snow tick tick ticking against the pane glass windows outside in the dark. Working a double has never felt so dehumanizing—she could melt into the floor right now. Whether from the tired headache blooming behind her eyes or the full attention from the bar, she’s not sure. 

A sharp smack! of Jim’s hand against the bartop makes her jump. “Oh come on, honeybunch,” the low accent matches every step that Kenneth, now, manages as he stumbles over to lean a plump hip against the bar. “E’ryone knows no mountain man like Logan Howlett comes off the mountain for just anythin’—‘less he’s gettin’ head,” Eyes skate her over her, visually-stimulated from top to bottom, ultimately parking at the cut of her tank top as he sloshes back the rest of his bottled MGM, “just how it works, sugartits.”

His eyes remain welded to her chest, but her jaw has long since lost its hinge. Any second now it would start creaking like a rusty gate, bone raking against bone. Opening and closing, like a fish choking on air. Slack and openmouthed, she blinks through the little flecks of dirt on the lens of her glasses, brain short circuiting to assimilate just how absolutely crude of a statement has just landed between her eyes like a stone to Goliath. 

Words don’t find her for a full handful of minutes before Jim and Kenneth’s attention are drawn away. Onto other conversation, this time bear hunting stories and the back-and-forth of rifles. Throat burning, like the inferno sands of Moab. Every sticky string of saliva moisture in her mouth is tapped dry, she attempts to raise spit on her tongue, to swallow. Virginal heat chases up her neck like a predator, sinking teeth into her confidence. Fans across her decolletage and collarbones. 

Queasy, embarrassment spins a weave down her spine and through her guts like a snake. Reminds her that wolves of the world so often hunt the lines of the innocent perimeters she’d fought hard to preserve—did everyone in town think she was sleeping with Logan? Like a broken record it spins, wobbling on the needle, screeching and clawing deep into the lines of her psyche. 

Years as a preacher’s daughter had provided her a certain level of naivete, certainly—-never ignorance. Wasn’t dull to the world beyond innocence, outside the lines of the pure and spotless idea of Christ and His church. She knew the world was spiraling, hell and brimstone around every corner. All parlor tricks and open gates, brazen. Like a painted woman in scarlets and pearls—or a drunk on a barstool at quarter-too. 

Mare hadn’t expected this level of forward. This, gall. Audacity. Snapping teeth of a big junkyard dog trying to look tough and scare her into shock—that’s what this was. Provocative, seeking a response. Gasoline on a snapping fire. Enough to make a harlot blush, and Jim knew it—it’s in the way he guzzles hops like his veins crave it, eyes following her even through the bottom of his glass.

He’d blurted what she’d suspected everyone in town to think, and for half of a breath, she wasn’t sure how to feel. Flushed and embarrassed, a given. 

Defiance lands like an airliner in her blood. Surprising, but not wholly unwarranted. Jaw setting with force enough to shatter the world, the heel of her boot grinds into the sticky floor as she turns to busy herself with empties. Glass cries out as she stacks them in the crook of her arm, fingers grabbing for whatever she can manage to stalk back to the kitchen.

Her heart pistons between her ribs like it’s been dropped into an Indy car, eyes flitting to and fro behind the bar. Anger. There's lots and lots of anger.

For handfuls of seconds she scours for a response. Something smart, smarmy—will fly in the face of what everyone in this town had been thinking about her since her boots had hit the province.

What Jim has actually implied—it burns. Like hot coals. For months she’d been walking the flames of the rumors; innocent little preacher’s daughter from the States.

“Y’even know how to spell ‘fuck’, darlin’?”

Far too busy brushing her dirty hands on the back of her jeans, Mare doesn’t even hear the squeak of Jim’s barstool swivel, “Well, I’ll be damned—if it isn’t the man of the mountain. How goes it, Logan?”

More snickering, and she about-faces, all-soldier as relief hitches itself like a wagon team to one of her ribs. 

Jim’s brows bounce over her direction, his look provocative enough to make her want to vomit right there on the floor.

Continuing his thought, he scoots his empty to her with his knuckles, “Come to fetch our pretty little Miss Minnesota here, eh, boy?” Another wet cough grates across her nerves like nails to blackboard, “Looks like you were right, babygirl—s’told us you’d be makin’ your way in, Logan. Didn’t quite believe ‘er, but wonders never cease I reckon.” His nose scrunches as she passes him another pint glass, “Was about to keep little girlie here all to m’self.” 

The line of her jaw twitches with how tight she’s clenching her teeth together, and it takes herculean will not to shoot off at the mouth—a trait she’s less than proud of. Thanks, Dad.

And it’s laughable how Jim is so quick to assume age, Logan’s raised brow in response shows it. At nearly 200 years old, he’s beyond surprise. Maybe, nearly. Closer than any part of her would like to admit, though nobody would know it—he doesn’t look a day over thirty-five. 

A little tick of contained smile at the corner of his mouth is enough to make her forget her name.  His dark eyes, calculating and deep, hold her gaze a few heartbeats. Logan reads her like an open book, an interested investigator—always has. She breaks first. Looks away, wiping at the sweat bubbling up on her brow. 

His sparkling, steady eyes flash with something she can’t identify before darting back to Jim. Logan’s hum of suspicion is warm. Low, too low. Medicinal honey, going straight to the center of her femininity like nothing could. Lord, if it didn’t set every bone in her body to gelatinous flame—she sucked in a breath that stabbed at the mesh of her lungs as he settled against the bar.  

He leans against the corner of the bar like he owns it, and he may as well have—out of the way and almost bleeding into the shadows of invisibility, he rests an elbow to the worn wood. A hand reaches to brush the wet of the storm from the sheepswool of his coat. Kisses of snow melt from his beard, ebony hair almost as quickly as they’d entangled—she doesn’t miss the blush that cold has left on his nose. 

“Is that right?” Leaning a bit heavier on his arm, his lips tip up in an amused little way that sets off fireworks in the depths of her womb, reminding her of organs long forgotten. “Good thing I’m a man of my word.” Toe-over-toe she slips to a stop across the bar from him, reaching for a half glass that’s almost too cold between her sweating palms. 

Logan pivots to face her, eyeballing her with a cool smile. Her usually-bright greeting is quiet, “Please sit. You’re ordering a whiskey.” It’s a demand, not a request.

Anything to keep her hands busy, to keep her from noticing how Kenneth hasn’t stopped ogling her tits since he sat down next to Jim, deep in his drink and fully, entirely out of his mind. 

“Just one?” Let no man say Logan Howlett isn’t keen. “Hi.” And just like that, he changes gears. Keeps her guessing, like always. Mysterious as the shadow, bright as the sun.

Elbow planted on the walnut bar, his brows bounce as his finger crooks. Come. 

Resting her hands at either side of his glass, she leans across the wood slowly. Considering him through low lashes, her heart swells at the way his tongue fills the pocket of his lower lip, considering. Hungry, almost.  Possessive.

He makes her forget Jim, and Kenneth, and anything resembling breathing in flatline seconds.

Logan’s eyes flick to her mouth, in a tantalizing, only–the-stuff-of-Hollywood way as her bottom lip curls in, a little sheepishly. Nose to nose, the bite of cigar smoke lingering about his beard is dizzying—a scent of fresh pine clings to his clothes. He smells of snow and man, just as he should. 

“Hi.” Little more than a breath and he closes daylight between them, lips brushing hers in a soft and slow hello. Smiling into his kiss, she sinks back to her feet behind the bar. Fingers curl into the wood beneath her palms. 

Changing gears, Mare reaches for a bag of clean bar rags and begins folding. “How was your day on the mountain?” 

His finger traces the rim of his whiskey glass and he shrugs a shoulder. “Peachy,” he takes a drink. She keeps looking over to Jim and Kenneth, who haven't stopped looking, and takes notices.

Logan's glass finds the counter again but his hand doesn’t lift from it, content to linger in the droplets of sweat. Simple, cleancut. Like always.

Then, “What’s wrong.” 

It isn’t a question—as her eyes cut up from her work to look at him, his are open and waiting. Seeking. Ever since she’d known him he was always watching, waiting; seeking something. 

He’d said once that he’d been looking for her all his life—her innocence. Purity. And it was no different, right now. Just now, he hunted the demons creeping inside her head, sitting invisible on her shoulder instead of the crisp light she usually carried. Nothing about him belies the name he gave himself, the name he carries nestled beneath his shirt on adamantium dogtags and numbers. 

The Wolverine—her Wolverine.

The sound of it, inward and out, snaps like a whip even months later. It suits him in such a way she’ll never fully describe, that poetry could never adjective. Thirty-two days of her calling Logan Howlett her own and it felt little more than a fairytale, her own Cinderella story lost to fantastical girlish dreams and giggles. A little over a month since he’d asked if she wanted to “go steady,” since she’d giggled at him like a child, “Nobody says that anymore, Lo,” and his “Wanna start?” had her—has her, to this very breath—unable to think straight. 

She lies.

“Nothing.”

Too quick to be truthful, she turns to replace a bottle of Bulleit, its glass lightly clattering against its brethren on the mirrored shelf. Her eyes flutter closed and she releases an uneasy breath, disappointed in her response—Logan wouldn’t take no for an answer. Never had, since she’d known him. 

A snippet of the night she’d met him races through her brain like a racehorse. “You should let me take a look.”  

“I’m fine,” She’d been too quick—too defensive. Good lies always bare a little truth in between their teeth, but—she’d always been a bad liar. A sheep amongst wolves. Or, rather, wolverines. 

“Bullshit. Needs stitches, we both know it—you’ve been workin’ the cage long enough to know the difference. Can’t let you go without a look.”  His look had been unmovable, like the earth. Understanding of her plight, her hesitance for an almost-stranger to look her over. Gentile as she’d sank low on a barstool to accept a beer from him.

Gentlemanlike, walking her through the steps—careful with his hands. Hands that hold her world, hands that could cut through stone. Aware of her nerves, but unrelenting all the same. 

His dark eyes narrow at her just so, his nose scrunching a little as he checks her reflection in the mirror. Much to her relief, Logan drops the subject. And she can see, in the reflection, he isn’t all too thrilled with dodging the question.

Knowing what topic of conversation would be on the ride up the mountain didn’t take rocket science, and she wilts inside knowing that honesty hadn’t been her first blush.

Two thunks on the bar have her checking her shoulder. Jim, signaling for another beer.

“‘Nother here, sugartits—make ‘er tall and strong, gotta get me home in one piece, y’know.” Jim’s smile is toothy, lopsided as he goes to the effort to lift his ass out of his seat. Passing by without so much as a nod, she swipes the glass from out in front of him. 

And before Kenneth’s hand is at his shoulder, Jim’s palm smacks across her ass cheek. Hard enough that it thwacks! against the pockets of her jeans.

It catches her off guard. Nobody had ever so much as ogled her ass to her knowledge, much less actually touched it—the pint glass falls from her fingers. Hits the boards of the wooden floor, the thick glass shattering to big pieces, low before her feet as if she’s some goddess worth breaking over.

A little breathless, she stumbles over her square-toed boots. Fingers curl into the wood until her knuckles are white. At first there’s anger, then embarrassment that hits her like an overloaded tractor trailer. Fluster ruffles her feathers like a wet hen, and she considers the broken glass at her feet. 

Audacity to laugh at the red bouncing to life on her cheeks has Jim roaring with laughter, unaware of what sin he’s just committed—her fingers are brushing the first big piece of jagged glass when she hears the swivel of a stool. The thunk of boots hitting the floor.

And before she can even begin to piece together what she suspects, she pops tall from behind the bar at the exact moment Jim’s laugh becomes a strangled wheeze. 

Collar snugged up too tight against his throat, Jim gags for air, tongue poking between fat lips as spit collects in the corners of his mouth. Breathing steadily, the crest and fall of Logan’s chest is evidence that he is on the raw and bleeding edge of composure—if his dark glare could be considered composed.

Brow little more than a hard line, his gaze narrows in Jim’s face as he leans in, lips curling in an almost animalistic snarl. 

“Logan,” Mare’s hiss is low, eyes skirting about the eight bodies that have almost backflipped up from their seats scattered about the bar, “Logan. Please—put ‘im down.” Murmurs have overtaken the air like quiet demons, they are no longer their own spectacle. 

Jim manages what sounds like the-hell-d’ya-think-yer-doin’, which produces a low rumble from somewhere in the base of Logan’s chest. Dark eyes cut to her, sweeping over her frame as she discards the chunk of glass to the small sink to her right. Heart pounding unlike anything she’d ever felt in her chest, bludgeoning the soft flesh of her lungs, she sucks in a stale breath that does nothing to ease the fire that seems to throb beneath her skin—sweat has replaced any semblance of chill in the room. Oxygen may as well be a hope. Tank top sticking to the flesh between her shoulder blades, her tongue nervously darts over her front teeth, eyes to Logan’s ironclad grip at Jim’s shirt collar. 

Logan doesn’t relent. Instead, she notices the cord of muscle in his arm tighten. Even beneath the shield of a coat, the mask of humanity —and she knows. His opposite hand lifts in Jim's face, and she's counting heartbeats before familiar adamantium splits skin wide open, bleeding with rage.

Adrenaline snaps into her blood like a whip, and she’s around the bar at his side in no more than a heartbeat or two. Hands at his arm. Fingers curling into the denim of his clothing. Met with hard muscle, he may as well have been cut from marble—an Adonis of power and strength unlike anything she’d ever seen.

The white’s of Jim’s eyes are all but tracking, brimming with terror as Logan snarls—actually snarls—down into his face. Possessive rage clouds any semblance of humanity left in his face—it’s all Wolverine. 

The Wolverine. Her Wolverine. Out from the shadows, out from any corner anyone had ever shoved him in—out to fight. To kill. For her. All for her, all for them, all for this.

She can’t put a full finger on the power of this honor, this…privilege. And that’s what it is, really—loving him is privilege. Is honor, only imaginable and dreamstate for girls like her. Everyday girls with little to offer, with little hopes for the next day other than to survive, to pray.

But Logan, somehow, had seen her—had seen her enough to care and care deeply, to his bones, adamantium bones he wars every second of the day to mummify, contain.  

Truth of the matter hits her like a stone between the eyes—it doesn’t matter how deeply Wolverine is buried within Logan’s sarcophagus of self control, his ability to walk the lines of his anger. Logan would kill for her, over nothing at all. It’s right here, right now, plain as the nose on her face—splayed out like prey, easy prey ready for the slaughter.

Logan would, could, destroy a man over a simple drunken act of flirtatiousness. If it meant her pleasure. 

What a position of power, indeed.

And Mare isn’t certain if it's love or power—if it’s even human.

Humanity wins. Logan's grip on Jim’s collar releases. Jim scurries away foot-over-foot, gasping for air, her realizing this is honestly much less complicated than matters of love, power. Both are players, but never common denominators.

A wolverine, after all, doesn’t fit into just one category—he’s both predator and prey. To something larger, to something smaller. 

This is just, very simply, Logan. 

Fisting and unfisting his fingers, he studies his hand as if it is otherworldly and not a part of his anatomy. After a few beats, Logan turns to face her. Jim is across the bar, a few hands clapping his back to check on him—as if he isn’t the offense of the entire situation.

Pressing into Logan, she rests her cheek against his chest, arms circling him in a hard embrace. He presses her close, a hand on the back of her head, chin coming to rest in her mess of curls. Breathing in his deep sense, her blood begins to cool—earthquaking in the base of her spine begins to dissipate. Colors of the room come alive again, the air suddenly all too breathable. 

Her head tips back to consider his face—unreadable, mostly, save for the glimmer of light in the corners of his eyes. 

The corner of her mouth tips up into a small tick, a heat she can’t describe hanging low in the base of her ribs as his hands lift to hold her face, delicately. As if he couldn't destroy her with a breath, as if he hadn't almost just culled mostly innocent blood.

Calluses rough against her cheeks, she presses into his touch. Firms up her arms around his middle. 

“And there he is,” there’s no malice in her voice, only awe. Care. “Had me worried there for a second, bub.” Smallest hint of a smile at the return use of his favorite jibe from her sends her heart pitching across her chest, as if it’ll take residence on the other side of her ribs.

The line of his jaw relaxes and she nuzzles her nose into the front of his flannel, “Now I get why Riz says ‘no boyfriends at work’—you’re a walking OSHA violation, Logan Howlett.” Unsure if Canada has anything remotely similar to OSHA, she forgets the idea entirely.

He knows, he always knows. 

Sighing into his chest, he fills up her senses on a full, deep breath. “And as much as I should slap you upside your thick head for almost slicing one of my best customers into tiny pieces, I have to say—I like the overprotectiveness,” her fingers gently brush through his beard, head tipped to the side like a curious pup, “a bunch. Like it a lot, Howlett.”  

His fingers in her hair tip her head back to look up at him, again. A low chortle has her blood flaming deep beneath her skin. “Yeah? Seemed a little nervous to me, bub,” he emphasizes the use of the name with a smile, spinning one of her curls around his finger. A gentle tug as her nose scrunches in amusement.

She giggles at the sensation of his fingers playing through her hair, “Flappin’ Jim had what was comin’ to him, that’s all.” 

“Maybe.” And without thinking, “Nobody’s ever stuck up for me like that before, Logan.” 

And there it is, out in the open.

Like the soft underbelly of the mud turtles she’d spotted all summer—-vulnerable. It hangs between them like a prayer. Lines on his face pull into a surprised wrinkle for all of a beat, then something enters his expression she’s never seen before—sorrow, maybe. Compassion, in the way his head cants to the side as he studies her looking at her boots. Just standing there, like a fortress. Unmoving, and resounding. Saying nothing and everything all at once.

Logan’s finger dips beneath her chin to tip her gaze up to his. “Don’t ask me how, but somehow I knew that,” his palm moves to caress her cheek, pad of his thumb gently skipping over the curve of her bottom lip. “You’re worth stickin’ up for, darlin’—I’m honored to be the first one to actually show it.” Two fingers dip into the front pocket of her jeans, shuffling her a few steps closer, until her chest brushes his.

“And let’s hope I’m the last."

Her heart swells to new heights yet unsurpassed by science, maybe even prose. “Who am I to deny the Wolverine?” Lifting on her toes, her nose brushes the seam of his mouth before her arms curl around his neck, his hands soft at the flare of her hips. “I’m yours if you’ll have me, Logan,” biting her lower lip, she fights the urge to smile—can’t, never could.

His kiss is hard. Fast, hungry—rough in the way God Himself intended for man. It’s everything the poets ever described a kiss to be, probably more. Infinitely more, mostly because it was her kiss. Hers, and hers alone. Right here, right now, even if the stars couldn’t see.  

He’s a little breathless when they part. And God, if it doesn’t take her apart. 

“Y’know, Logan—Jim was right about one thing, before he ran his fat mouth off.” 

He chuckles. “Hm?” 

“You really kinda are a wild man.”